Seite 1 Karfunkel 120 online K.: First of all thank you so much for

Seite 1
Karfunkel 120 online
K.: First of all thank you so
much for giving us this interview! Last year, you and
many thousand people all
over the world celebrated
the 50th anniversary of
OBOD. Can you just give us
a short overview of its history?
PCG: The Order was founded
in 1964 by a poet and historian, Ross Nichols, who was the
Chairman, known as the
‘Maenarch’, of the Ancient
Druid Order, which was founded in the early years of the
twentieth century. He, and
some colleagues, such as Vera
Chapman, the founder of the
Tolkien Society, wanted to
start a new group that celebrated all eight seasonal festivals,
and that worked with three
schools of teaching: the Bards,
Philip Carr-Gomm, der seit mehr
als 30 Jahren den Order of Bards,
Ovates an Druids (OBOD) leitet,
ist ganz eindeutig der Ökumeniker unter den Druiden. Fest in seiner eigenen Tradition verwurzelt,
hat der gelernte Psychologe ein
Talent für den Blick über den
Gartenzaun zu den wiccanischen
oder christlichen Nachbarn und
lädt dazu ein, das Verbindende gemeinsam zu erleben. Für Karfunkel
Nr. 120 haben wir mit ihm gesprochen. In der Printausgabe gibt es
die deutsche Übersetzung des
Interviews, hier online nun das
Original.
Ovates and Druids. This new
Order of Bards Ovates & Druids flourished for just eleven
years, until Ross Nichols died
in 1975. His successor, John
Brant, decided to close the
Order ‘in the apparent world’
and died soon after. In 1988 I
was asked to revive the Order
and to put its teachings into
the form of a distance-learning course. This resulted in a
rapid increase in membership,
which over the last 26 years
has grown to some 17,000
members who receive the training materials in seven languages. There are 150 groups
(known as ‘seed groups and
groves’) around the world and
the course is published in English, German, French, Dutch,
Portuguese, Italian and Czech.
Members produce magazines
in several languages and a
monthly podcast, called ‘Druidcast’, which is soon to reach
its 100th episode. We also hold
camps and big gatherings in
various places – the next one
is our international camp at a
castle in Germany, followed by
our annual summer gathering
in Glastonbury.
K.: As Ronald Hutton in his
speech on the gathering in
Glastonbury last year said,
OBOD is a very important
part of modern spirituality.
What are the key features of
the druidic path?
PCG: Its key features are a reverence for the Earth and Nature and a love of myth and
story. Druids believe that all
natural phenomena, from stones to trees and stars, have
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much to teach us, and that one
of our most important tasks as
human beings is to get back in
touch with the rhythms of Nature, to listen to Her, and to
protect Her. Along the path we
work with meditation, storytelling, inner journeys, contemplation and stillness, ritual
and poetry to deepen and develop ourselves and to awake
the ‘Inner Sage’ and the ‘inner
Shaman’ within us – at the
same time opening to our full
creative potential. We study
tree lore and stone lore, animal and plant lore, and learn
how to perform rituals at eight
special times during the year:
the solstices and equinoxes,
and the Celtic fire-festivals.
K.: 50 years OBOD – what
did you achieve, what are the
most important topics to
concentrate on in the future?
PCG: Over the last 50 years,
and particularly over the last
26 years, we have engaged
primarily in three tasks: firstly, we have developed a very
comprehensive training programme with much teaching
material and a network of over
fifty mentors worldwide that
helps members develop themselves spiritually and psychologically; secondly we have
encouraged research into
Druid history so that our understanding of our tradition is
now as strong and clear as it
ever has been; and thirdly we
have explored and published
material on star, plant, tree
and animal lore related to
Druidry. It feels as if now that
we have broadly accomplished
these goals we can turn to developing ways of service. A
spirituality, after all, is concerned with two tasks: developing the Self, becoming Whole,
gaining Enlightenment, or ho-
wever you want to term this,
and being of use to the world –
being of service. I think we’ve
done well with the first aim,
and now we can focus more on
the second. We already have
tree-planting and ecological
responsibility programmes in
place, but what we are working on now is developing
training programmes in the art
of celebrancy – helping members develop the skills to officiate at funerals, weddings,
namings and other rites of
passage. I am sure there will
be other ways we can encourage acts of service, but at the
moment this is the focus for us.
K.: You are working intensely to offer Druidry as a
bridge in the interfaith dialogue. How does this activity
develop and why are you engaging in this topic?
PCG: You know the way today
people are having ‘seed exchange’ meetings? They meet up and
swap seeds – sometimes just ordinary seeds
of plants or vegetables,
sometimes rare seeds.
That way our gardens
can grow and we can
maintain diversity and
from that diversity
comes resilience to
pests, and to the vagaries of the weather. I
see interfaith work in a
similar way. If we live,
spiritually and culturally, in a mono-culture –
only mixing with fellow
travellers, only reading
about one’s own tradition, we lose our resilience, and can drift towards a kind of fundamentalism. By meeting
and exchanging with
people who are following different paths, we
swap ideas and experiences and
we ‘grow’ our spiritual garden
more effectively. We discover
that we can enrich our own path.
Sometimes we cannot transplant
certain ideas or viewpoints, but
in other instances we find we can
bring more colour into our world
and perhaps help others to colour theirs too.
K.: In the annual review of
2014, you wrote that you will
lead attention to the topics of
liturgy as there are naming,
handfasting and rites of
transmission in the near future. What can Christians
learn from the rites of the
druidic tradition?
PCG: In Druid rites we draw
as much as we can on the imagery and the powers of Nature,
and we try as well to avoid as
much theology and ideas of
doctrine and dogma as possible. Perhaps this can be of
some help. I know one Christian group, the Forest Church,
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K.: Have you learned something from the Christian liturgy?
PCG: In my experience, there
is a tremendous beauty and
power in much of Christian liturgy, but I also find much of it
hampered by an old-fashioned
feeling – as if a church service
is a sort of ‘historical reenactment’ that belongs to a
different age. Nevertheless, the
centuries of tradition and the
beauty of the language, music,
art and symbolism within
Christianity I find very uplifting, and it would be wonderful if that level of aesthetic sophistication could be present
within Druid ritual too.
K.: What relevance has
music in the druidic rituals
and meetings
PCG: When musicians are present at rituals and meetings it
always enriches
the experience.
They represent
the Bardic stream
of Druidry, and
stream is a good
word to use because they seem
to bring a current
of
life-giving
energy that flows
into the event,
uplifting and inspiring us. I
would like to encourage more singing and more
music-making in our meetings.
K.: You are intensely studying religious sources and
texts; I remember for example your quotes of the
churchfather Jerome or of
Pope John Paul II, concerning the body, in your book
‘A brief history of Nakedness’ – what sort of reaction
did you get from those theologians who should know
those texts as well?
PCG: A number of church people wrote very favourable reviews, including the Dean of
Brentwood Cathedral, and
Christian priest and author
Mark Townsend. It was even
briefly mentioned in the
Church of England newspaper
The Church Times.
K.: Certainly you have heard
about the new theory from
Julian Spalding, that the megaliths of Stonehenge would
not have been used for ceremonies at ground level, but
would instead have supported
a circular platform on which
ceremonies were performed
to the rotating heavens. What
do you think about that?
PCG: I like it because it is
provocative and new, but I
don’t think it is likely as an ex-
planation. Stone circles are
found all over the world, and
none of them has ever been associated with a platform raised above it. But who knows?
It is worth considering every
theory.
In your interview with Damh
for Druicast you mentioned
your new book. What are
you writing about?
PCG: I am writing a story
based on the real lives of two figures who lived in Brittany during World War Two: the clairvoyant Geneviève Zaepffel and
Abbé Henri Gillard, who built a
church dedicated to the Holy
Grail just by the forest of Brocèliande. I was told that Geneviève took a German officer as
a lover during the war, and the
story is about their affair and
about the strange way in which
the Abbé’s project was mirrored
by Himmler as he built a grail
temple in the SS castle at Wewelsburg. Its provisional title is
‘In the Shadow of the Grail’,
and one of my aims with the
book is to explore the relationship between idealism, cruelty
and fanaticism – to ask questions about human nature and
destiny.
Thanks for your time!
Literaturhinweis:
Philipp Carr-Gomm: Der Weg des Druiden
Philipp Carr-Gomm lebt seit seinem 15. Lebensjahr in der druidischen Tradition und
ist außerdem als Psychotherapeut ausgebildet. Der Weg des Druiden ist eine
sensitive Form der Reisebeschreibung,
die neben der Vielschichtigkeit der äußeren Landschaft auch die Schönheiten
der inneren Seelenlandschaft beschreibt. Für Philipp Carr-Gomm ist
dies kein Gegensatz, sondern vielmehr
Ausdruck einer von jeher bestehenden
tiefen Verbindung zwischen äußerem
und innerem Sein. Sein Blick auf die
Landschaft des südlichen England
stärkt die Aufmerksamkeit für die keltische und druidische Tradition, die in
heiligen Hainen, Hügeln und den Abbildern von Riesen oder Göttinnen ihre
Spuren hinterlassen hat. Berührend
spirituell sind auch die druidischen Rituale zum Tod von Lucie, der Feier des
Wiedereintritts von Sophie in die Welt
und der Verbindung von Jane und Michael, die Einblick in die menschenfreundlichen Rituale der druidischen
Tradition geben und eine gute Grundlage für den interreligiösen Dialog mit
Liturgen anderer Glaubensrichtungen
bilden. Spannende Einsichten vermitteln die Vergleiche Carr-Gomms zwischen den Methoden der Psychotherapie und der
Druidischen Weltsicht, ihre Übereinstimmungen,
aber auch ihre Unterschiede. Wer sich für die druidische Tradition interessiert und die Landschaft
des südlichen England liebt, sollte sich dieses
Buch nicht entgehen lassen.
Arun Verlag, Uhlstädt-Kirchhasel 2011, 194 S.,
ISBN 978-3-86663-063-5, 19,95 €.
Barbara Stühlmeyer
Fotos (3): Philip Carr-Gomm
which is a growing movement
of Christians who worship out
of doors in natural settings,
has been inspired by Druid ritual. Perhaps there are others.
Zum Weitersurfen:
www.philipcarr-gomm.com; www.druidry.org